


Now You See Me

by CalamityCain



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityCain/pseuds/CalamityCain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Through the centuries, only four times have you let me through. Four times have you allowed me to glimpse what you strive so hard to keep hidden from me.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now You See Me

 

Dusk, and a soft velvet laugh. His is a voice that has just begun to deepen. While others have ascended into the brotherhood of men, he is a half-boy still, a sprite among us.

 

Part of me wishes I could have him like this forever. A sly slender thing clad in shadows that becomes him like a second skin, a creature quicksilver wit and wiry limbs and wicked smiles.

 

Ah, that smile. Free of the madness and malice that would become all too familiar.

 

I chase him into the beckoning night as the sun fades and the shadows cling ever closer to his skin. Our antics court the disapproval of more dignified peers. But what of manhood? What do we care? We are children still, full of childish belly-laughter and careless games. Except even at his most careless, he is still impossibly deft. Especially when it comes to hide-and-seek.

 

_Now you see me._

_Now you don’t._

 

“I’ll hunt you down yet!” I yell.

 

“Ah yes, your hunter’s instinct is flawless as always,” he replies while evading my grasp for the hundredth time.

 

It isn’t until I am picking him up from a badly wounded knee, and he’s pretending it doesn’t hurt, that I catch a glimpse of something beyond the slyness and sharp words. His smile is naked; bereft of wicked edges. Something deeper than gratitude suffuses his face with a glow.

 

In that moment he is as fair as the moon.

 

The most fleeting of moments. But not so fleeting that I miss what he increasingly seeks to hide. And why - ?

 

But it is Loki’s nature to love from behind a mask. One that I can never remove.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Despair is etched onto his face. Deeper and clearer than the markings on his cheekbones and brow that I am seeing for the first time.

 

He looks at me with crimson eyes that accuse me of nameless crimes.

 

“Now you see me. _Brother._ ”

 

I reach out for this strange new face, to see if its icy azure feels different. He recoils so fast I’m taken aback. Hisses something murderous in my direction even as he hides his gaze from me, ashamed, perhaps. I see nothing to be shameful of: he is beautiful and I wish to hold him, but now it seems he will never let me touch him again.

 

“Has no one ever told you the truth? The result of our – _your_ father’s folly that stands before you?”

 

“I see my brother. The fact that he wears a different face doesn’t stop him from being so.”

 

“You never had a brother. What you had was a stranger – a pretender – a – ”

 

 _A monster._ The word just barely forms on his lips, but I read it just fine.

 

He turns away then. As if he could hide any more from me, when we have had a hundred years to know each other.

 

“I have always had you, Loki. Some things run even deeper than blood.” Slowly I reach out to clasp his shoulder. Slowly, like a fearful animal, he lets me. “And what of father and his so-called mistake? It is one I don’t regret him making.”

 

“He never loved me.”

 

“ _I_ love you.”

 

 _“Yes, it is always about you, isn’t it?”_ The outburst is a blast of ice, completely unexpected. He is practically hissing; the red of his glare is more vivid than ever, magnified as they are by tears. I wish to offer my shoulder for those tears to fall on. I wish to be the one to wipe them away when he is finally exhausted from crying.

 

But he never does cry. Slowly the paleness creeps back over his face, until there is nothing left of the Jötun prince with his jewel eyes that dare not even meet mine for fear he will find loathing there.

 

How could I ever loathe him? A heart cannot change its rhythm nor whom it beats for in a blink. Does he think so little of mine?

 

 

* * *

 

 

Death, and the emptiness that follows, is a bitter way to greet freedom.

 

Which is how I find him two hours later: bitter. He slumps bonelessly against the wall of the bath chamber, long clean of the grime of imprisonment, stripped of illusion and the armour it provides. His mouth is as wet and red as the cries he has been biting back. The water washes over him, but it cannot wash away the cracks in his eyes, his voice.

 

“Leave me, Thor.”

 

There are tears in my eyes too, as I crouch to meet the white, broken frame. I kneel before him as if he were draped in finery instead of cooling droplets and wet tangled hair that he wears like a crown. A king, as surely as I am.

 

“I said  _leave –_ ”

 

“Enough.” Our lips meet without intending too. I bury myself in him, and he in me. I clasp his chin as I kiss him, then his neck, then the gentle curve of shoulders that have grown sharp with self-imposed starvation. Instinctively his body curves into mine: a perfect fit. We are as close as the lovers we once were, and though neither of us are in the mood for intimacy, we are content to hold each other like this.

 

 _“Now you see me,”_  he says. The same mocking line thrown in my face when I first greeted him in his cell. But without the mockery, it becomes a statement of fragility – a cry for help.

 

His thin fingers scrabble over the comfortless tiles until I take them in my hand and hold them. I hold him until he stops shaking.

 

Once, we were still and warm as we lay together beneath the eternal sun. Not as kings, but as boys. As brothers.

 

Now we attempt to make each other whole again. For once the steel of his tongue and his gaze are absent; he leans into me, finally, allowing the sobs to spill from the heart of one who had lost a mother, and then was barred from bidding her farewell.

 

Yet another wrong in a growing list of wrongs. But we will try to make them right.

 

“Have faith,” I whisper into his dark tangles.

 

Once more, the sun will rise. And we will be as we were.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dust settles around us as Mjolnir sings softly of the demise she has wrought.

 

It is over. We have won. And yet my heart shatters continuously in a cycle I will carry with me into the decades.

 

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry,” he says in a series of wreaked breaths, and means it.

 

Sorrow leaves me all but blind.  _“Fool.”_

 

“Yes. I am a fool. I always was.” He smiles. Shudders his last strains of life into my huge, useless arms.

 

I kneel, cradling his wounded body. Hold him the way my father held mother as the kiss of the valkyrjur crowned her golden brow.

 

"You will join her there." My lips stop trembling long enough to press themselves against his forehead. "In the glorious halls reserved for those who die a warrior's d – ”

 

I falter at the last word. Then the tears begin to flow. And they do not stop.

 

My chest heaves; my face, wet and ugly, spews forth a barrage of sobs that cannot cease their flow even though I wish only peace for this moment. I wish to embrace him with warmth and dignity and love, and instead I can offer only this broken visage.

 

Then a cool hand touches my cheek. The fog lifts briefly from my eyes. And I see him – and he is  _beautiful._

 

Beautiful, despite the grey that creeps into the sharp corners of his face. He shines with a soft brilliance as his lips curve up in a smile. And I know that I am forgiven. At long last, the wretched hatred, the lies, the malice and madness that tore a rift between us leaves him, leaving only the true radiance of the brother I once had, and now – at the end – have again.

 

“Now you see me.”

 

We kiss. He breathes warm sweetness into me. And he is gone.

 

When the tears at long last fade, I feel a tingle of warmth on my face. Light is dawning over the valley of the svartalf _á_ r. The Aether has ceased its reign.

 

Once more, the sun will rise. But not all will rise with it.

 

 


End file.
